Spherical globes that have imprinted on their surface the map of the world are well known. They are generally provided with an axle through their north and south poles. They may be mounted on a base by the axle, so that they may be rotated for viewing a selected area. U.S. Pat. No. 6,625,086 issued Sep. 23, 2003 to Kim discloses a globe with a rotation sensor on the axle. A pointer indicates a longitude position at a particular time zone on the globe. The sensor feeds the rotation information into an electronic processor and a display indicates a major city in that time zone and also displays the current time in that time zone.
Navigational aids for providing maps in vehicles and on computers have detailed maps stored on a memory such as a computer disc. The information is retrieved by inputting some location data. This enables selection of particular map information from the memory to be displayed on a computer monitor or a small monitor, such as a battery operated liquid crystal display in a vehicle.
Globes can be imprinted with a great deal of geographic information. However, unless the world globe is very large, the details are not easily read. Because a globe is spherical, it is awkward and expensive to have a large one. It is much less awkward and costly to have detailed planar maps. They may also be more easily updated. Flat and folded maps are very useful, but they lack the perspective given by the globe.